Dr. Lissa Paul

Professor (PhD), Department of Undergraduate and Graduate Studies in Education

Bio

Lissa Paul is a literary scholar specializing in children’s literature, particularly in children’s poetry, as well as in cultural studies and more recently, in eighteenth century and Caribbean literary studies. She has authored or edited seven books, has chapters in another nineteen and publishes widely in international journals. She also edited the Lion and the Unicorn for many years. Her research is generously funded by SSHRC and her new book, Eliza Fenwick: Early Modern Feminist will be published by the University of Delaware Press in 2019.

SSHRC-funded research on British author and teacher, Eliza Fenwick (1766-1840), who lived and taught in Niagara and Toronto in the 1830s. As she migrated from late-Enlightenment Britain to Upper Canada, via Barbados, New York and New Haven, I’m also involved in migration studies. Eliza Fenwick: Early Modern Feminist is to be published in early 2019 by the University of Delaware Press. I’m currently working on a scholarly volume of her letters.

History of Resistance by Enslaved People in Barbados in the late 18th and early 19th centuries My work on Eliza Fenwick led me to research on colonial Barbados in the early 19th century, a discovering a mine of history-changing information in deteriorating microfilm copies of the Barbados Mercury Gazette. A grant received from the British Library Endangered Archives Programme to digitize the newspapers opens a new vein in researching the history of the island.

Keywords for Children’s Literature, 2nd Edition to be published in 2019 by New York University Press. As the first edition, published in 2011, with my co-editor, Philip Nel, was successful, we are working, with a third co-editor, Danish scholar, Nina Christensen, on a new more international volume, containing 60 essays.

Lion and the Unicorn Award for Excellence in North American Poetry. I was a founder of the award in 2005, and have been a judge for the last five years, an co-writer of the award essay on the year’s work in poetry for children.

SSHRC Insight Grant (2016-21): Hunting for Mrs. Fenwick: 1766-1840: Her Life and Letters. Lissa is using the award to complete her biography of Eliza Fenwick and to produce a scholarly edition of her letters. Both to be Published by the University of Toronto Press.

“Panning for Gold: The 2017 Lion and the Unicorn Award for Excellence in North American Poetry.” Lion and the Unicorn 41, 3 (September 2017): 386-403. Co-written with Richard Flynn and Joseph T. Thomas.

“Missing in Action.” Review essay of The War Poems of Robert Graves. Ed. Robert Mundye. Bridgend: Seren, 2016. Gravesiana: The Journal of the Robert Graves Society. 4: 2 (Spring 2017): 441-8.

“The Quick and the Dead; The 2016 Lion and the Unicorn Award for Excellence in North American Poetry. Co-written with Richard Flynn ad Kate Pendlebury. Lion and the Unicorn 40:3 (Fall 2016): 329-46.

“Eliza Fenwick: Writing Life and Literature in Cork.” Breac: A Digital Journal of Irish Studies. August 2016.

“Ted Hughes and the Environmental Imagination: Brought to You by the Letter R.” The Ted Hughes Society Journal V, 1 (January 2016): 18-24.

“A New Parliament of Fouls: The 2015 Lion and the Unicorn Award for Excellence in North American Poetry. “ Co-written with Kate Pendlebury and Craig Svonkin. Lion and the Unicorn 39: 3 (Fall 2015): 331-351.

“Old Guard <Avant Garde < Kindergarde: Lion and the Unicorn Award for Excellence in North American Poetry.” Co-written with Donelle Ruwe and Craig Svonkin. Lion and the Unicorn 38:3 (Fall 2014): 380-400.

“Approaching War: Australian and Canadian Culture and the First World War: Childhood in the Past 7.1 (May 2014): 3-13. Co-written with Rosemary Ross Johnston.